YouTube have announced they’re killing annotations on videos. Instead, creators will have to use cards which are structured clickable links that appears at the end of your video, rather than the wild west that was annotations, many of which were miss-used by authors.

YouTube says you can think of cards like an evolution of annotations.

They can inform your viewers about other videos, merch, playlists, websites and more. They look as beautiful as your videos, are available anytime during the video and yes, they finally work on mobile.

The reason behind the change is of course to tidy up the service, but Google also says the use of annotations has decreased by over 70%.

Starting May 2nd, 2017, the Annotations Editor will be discontinued. After this date, you’ll no longer be able to add new or edit existing annotations, only delete them, however existing annotations will remain, but only be displayed on desktop computers. The new cards are available cross-platform, on the web, mobile and even YouTube apps on TVs and set top boxes.
Annotations Editor launched in 2008, since then, the world has increasingly moved to consuming content on mobile devices. A massive 60% of YouTube’s watchtime is now on mobile.There could be big wins for you as a content creator, with YouTube claiming End Screens and Cards generate 7x more clicks across YouTube than annotations.

The most damming piece of data comes around the fact that on average viewers close 12 annotations before they click on one of them.

The time has come for annotations to go away, so if you’re creating new content, it’s a great idea to start moving now.

Here’s a tutorial video on how to use Cards on YouTube.

This tutorial shows you how to add end screens to the last 5-20 seconds of your videos.

Creator of techAU, Jason has spent the dozen+ years covering technology in Australia and around the world. Bringing a background in multimedia and passion for technology to the job, Cartwright delivers detailed product reviews, event coverage and industry news on a daily basis.

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